Mentor’s holiday gift: New improved Sourcery CodeBench

Mentor Graphics has a holiday gift that serious embedded software developers can get for themselves in time for Christmas: the newest version of its Embedded Sourcery CodeBench embedded software development tools.

Integrated with the company’s graphical debugging and analysis Sourcery Analyzer and the latest in open source components, the new version, said Guy Moshe, Mentor’s general manager of open source tools, was the ability for developers with access to updated and validated open source software as well.

Enhancements have been made to achieve faster compilation, superior debugging, and improved runtime performance. In addition, embedded Linux developers can now create powerful customized trace and performance analysis routines using the updated Sourcery Analyzer technology.

Among the key improvements is an update of the compiler to GCC 4.8.1, providing access to a new general optimization level (-Og) for fast compilation and superior debugging with improved runtime performance as well as an update to Eclipse CDT 8.2

It includes an enhanced GDB (7.6.50) console that enables breakpoints, watchpoints and tracepoints to be set and shown in the breakpoints view. Now, he said, all breakpoints related to GDB commands are now supported and synchronized with the user interface (UI).

In addition to improved C++11 support, there are also improvements in the Subversion revision control system.

In the Professional addition there is a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Vista Virtual Prototype for greater visibility into execution including performance and power consumption. Also, in that version,developers now have the ability to create both GNU/Linux and bare-metal applications with a single installation.

Included are a number of new Sourcery Analyzer tool capabilities including support for importing Diagnostic Logging and Trace (DLT) file format, enabling users of GENIVI-compliant Linux to analyze infotainment application trace data, as well as quicker integration with Linux platforms.

Also incorporated is the ability to collect data from remote systems using the standalone data collection script generation tool and improved code template creation of custom analysis agents.

In the Professional addition there is a dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 Vista Virtual Prototype for greater visibility into execution including performance and power consumption. Also, in that version,developers now have the ability to create both GNU/Linux and bare-metal applications with a single installation.